Yet They Call Us Brothers
Fasasi Abdulrosheed Oladipupo
“Okpaladike and his Obu.” Uche Okeke
Yet They Call Us Brothers
We have some brothers towards the East,
where vultures visit all night. We don't
owe them a thing but pity and questions.
Why they allowed a young boy to transverse
the Sahara alone, and why they left some sacred girls
to go out at night, when they knew the beasts in the khaki
were hungry and all they want is a prey to tear apart.
We have some brothers around the North,
The city of cactuses. We owe them nothing,
and yet they hold us for this, they sell our sons
to the land that will steal their names for shillings
and watches of gold. They call them names that only
exist in the stone era. Our brothers held us by rope—
a modern chain around our necks, and yet they call us brothers.
We have some brothers in the West,
the city of owls, where owls are given the batons of rulership.
We owe them nothing, but they take revenge
in the name of religion, furling bombs under the turbans,
sailing missiles with the ships of the churches of god,
the clerics who turn the altar, a place of worship, into their warships,
they turn the abandoned minarets into the store of erection.
We have some brothers at the heart of the South
The land of apartheid, we owe them nothing.
We mourn with them when their days were hard nut.
We file their teeth; maybe they can bite the enemies with them.
We gave them the clubs of our dead brave fathers,
maybe they can chase the intruders away from their lands, but
they end up probing the teeth on our necks, and
as for the clubs, our heads remain the golfballs on which they are tested.
They set us on fire, and yet they call us brothers.
In the Dark
In the dark
a stillness roams the heart of
an immigrant woman
who wears sadness like old pajamas
whose teeth have been tinted
by the kola of solitude.
In the dark
she lights the remnants of candles
searching for the faces of friends
walls archive their memories—
a vacuum
full of silent whisperings.
In the dark
always at the window waiting,
she counts bean pods like her aches,
cooking what remains of her grief,
waiting for the dawn, waiting for cock crow.
Fasasi Abdulrosheed Oladipupo is a Nigerian, a student of Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His first love is making art and he loves to pen down the whisperings of his heart. He believes these will take him to places one day. He made the shortlist of July 2019 edition of BBPC Contest all over Nigeria. His works have been published in the recent Summer Review of Night Heron Barks ( March 2020), Poesis Journal 11th Issue and he will be featured in Citron Review's 2020 fall issue.
Fasasi Abdulrosheed Oladipupo is a Nigerian, a student of Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His first love is making art and he loves to pen down the whisperings of his heart. He believes these will take him to places one day. He made the shortlist of July 2019 edition of BBPC Contest all over Nigeria. His works have been published in the recent Summer Review of Night Heron Barks ( March 2020), Poesis Journal 11th Issue and he will be featured in Citron Review's 2020 fall issue.